


x. what is the heart

by kapteeni



Series: ghost— [3]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Gen, Immortality, Joui War, Medical Trauma, Trauma, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 17:40:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18833530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kapteeni/pseuds/kapteeni
Summary: “You know, they’ve started to make legends about us,” Tatsuma says.





	x. what is the heart

The soldier’s helmets look like ghost’s crowns. 

Gintoki’s sure that for some, they are. There’s no doubt that there are ghosts battling alongside the living, slain long ago and unsure where to go, so they repeat the cycle of their lives. It’s not Gintoki’s job to put them to rest, so he leaves them be. 

Instead, he watches as men—boys—who he knows will soon starve to death lay out offerings: bowls of rice, foraged vegetables, the last drops of sake. If only Gintoki could tell them that it isn’t needed. Nothing they can give to him now would compare to the life they would give later. Then they pray, hands clasped together and eyes scrunched shut, like children. To Takasugi, they pray for courage; to Katsura, guidance; to Sakamoto, protection; to Gintoki, victory. 

From Takasugi they recieve heat in their blood, a roar echoing in their ears that drowns out the screams. Visions of the ones they left at home cloud their senses from the pain: a wife offering tea, a child whose guts spill out around an enemy’s blade. 

From Katsura they receive a clear mind, a blessing anywhere except a battlefield. Many a commander has gone mad from the wisdom Katsura awakens in them. What man could stay sane after choosing who to send to their deaths and who to spare? 

From Sakamoto, they receive nothing. Protection is the one thing that can never be given in a war. But the soldiers pray, and Sakamoto listens to their fears and their hopes and he looks up at the stars and says a prayer of his own. 

From Gintoki, they recieve silence. Victory in war is a massacre, and massacres are quiet. They only happen when everyone’s dead. So those petitioners receive a god whose robes are heavy with gore, whose sword becomes all the more ancient with each young life it takes, whose eyes are as glazed as the dead’s, and whose tongue is as still as a battlefield. He fights alongside them, though he has no side. It’s where he belongs. 

Someone once cuts him down from atop a horse, cleaving him near in half, from where his shoulder meets his neck to his stomach. He lays face-down in the mud for three days before anyone finds him. The trouble with immortality is that, as far as he can tell, he heals no faster than any human. The only difference is that he doesn't die. Anyone could heal from anything, if given enough time, enough life. 

It’s Tatsuma who finds him and pulls him into a tent. Apparently Gintoki’s guts had spilled out, and Tatsuma was forced use his own shirt to fasten a pouch to carry them in. Gintoki does feel bad about that, when they tell him. Tatsuma’s too gentle to see those kinds of things. He doesn’t feel bad when he hears that Takasugi took one look at him, sighed like Gintoki was a petulant child, and stuffed his organs back into him, regardless of where they were supposed to go. 

It’s one of the few wounds he’s gotten that actually scars. He’s out for a month while his body stitches itself back together. Two weeks are spent with his chest completely open, pus and blood bubbling out of him as organs come back together and bones rearrange themselves. The new skin on his shoulder heals so tightly that Gintoki cuts it back open himself. Zura yells at him for that, and says it serves Gintoki right after he gets an infection. He still comes and presses cold cloths on Gintoki’s forehead, but he’s obviously upset about it. 

Tatsuma is quiet after that. Gintoki doesn’t really notice until one night a few weeks after he’s recovered. They’re sitting on a hilltop with a view of the sea, watching the few ships anchored at the coast go up in flame. Gintoki had set them on fire, which Tatsuma hated, but there was nothing either of them could do about it. 

It’s a cold night, but the fires have grown so large that Gintoki’s skin prickles with sweat, even from this distance. He lays back in the grass. 

“You know, they’ve started to make legends about us,” Tatsuma says. 

“Yeah?” Gintoki murmurs. It’s nice up here, just the two of them. Zura and Takasugi are making a racket somewhere else, and Tatsuma is a one-person conversation. He closes his eyes. 

“Takasugi can raise an army of demons,” Tatusma continues. “One battalion from each level of hell, some say.” 

“He’s been holding out on us.” 

“Zura’s bringing divine judgement upon the enemy, and he was the one who taught our generals how to lead.” 

Gintoki yawns. “What kind of divine judgement does Zura bring? Does he flip their toilet paper roll around? Shrink all their briefs in the wash? And gods help the man Zura tries to teach.” 

“I have a harem of beautiful young girls that floats in the sky,” Tatsuma says. “I cavort with the moon goddess and fly up to her home every night. I treat the sky like mortals treat the sea, and scoop up nets full of birds.” 

“And thunder is the sound of your farts, yeah, I get it. But I don’t understand how you get all the girls.” Gintoki opens his eyes and props himself up on an elbow. “Yours don’t have anything to do with anything. ‘Oh, where was Tatsuma during that battle?’ ‘Up _cavorting_ with some celestial slut, probably.’ Aren’t the camp followers good enough for you? Eat fish like a regular person, dammit.” 

“Eh? Why don’tcha think I could be the popular one?” 

“I didn’t say you’re not popular, I said you’re useless.” 

Tatsuma rolls over to look at Gintoki. The light of the burning ships dances across his face, casting disconcerting shadows. His skin seems almost red, but the hollows of his eyes are dark and deep. “Don’tcha wanna hear what they say ‘bout you, Kintoki?” 

“I don’t think you’d hear anything about me,” Gintoki says, looking away. “Considering you’re listening for the wrong name.” 

“They call you the Shiroyasha,” Tatsuma says, poking Gintoki’s face with each syllable. His nail digs into Gintoki’s cheek. “They seem to’ve connected you to some old story their grandfathers’ told them, about a white haired demon child who ate the meat of dying men.” 

“I guess even myths have to grow up,” Gintoki says, swatting Tatsuma’s hand away. “Ate the meat of dying men? What, did he steal it out of their rucksacks?” 

“Ahaha, how cruel! I was tryin’ to be poetic,” Tatsuma says. “It sounds better than saying ‘some cannibal brat,’ don’t it?” 

Gintoki sighs. “I don’t think you can make this into poetry.” He wrenches his gaze from the flames and looks up at the stars. “Takasugi’s leading a charge tomorrow, and I doubt anyone in his army is anything more than human.” 

“But it’s nice to think about, yeah?” Tatsuma reaches one hand up towards the sky, closing his fist and opening it again as if he expects a star to be in his palm. “I wish I was sailin’ through the stars, instead of wading through blood.” 

“Don’t let Takasugi hear you say that.” 

“I didn’t realize, you know,” Tatsuma says, after awhile. “It’s stupid, but I really didn’t know.”

“What are you babbling on about now?” Gintoki asks, though he’s afraid that he doesn’t need to. 

Tatsuma pulls his knees up to his chest. He looks very young, like this. “When I found you. I—” He scratches behind his ear, but his movements are stiff and jilted. “I really thought you were dead.” 

Gintoki feels unbearably awkward. It’s a sickening feeling, a curdling in his stomach and a heaviness in his limbs. “Tatsuma,” he says, trying for light-hearted but it comes out flat. He clears his throat. “We don’t—just drop it, okay?”

“I panicked,” Tatsuma says. “I saw you lyin’ there and I just. All I could think about was how the hell I was supposed to tell Zura. I couldn’t focus on anythin’ else. And I figured if I couldn’t tell him, I’d just have to show him. It was like a dream, y’know, when the stupidest decisions are the only ones that make sense.” 

“That’s not any different from what you do awake, is it?” 

“So I picked you up and I dragged you back,” Tatsuma continues. “And then. ‘Sugi and Zura looked at you and they didn’t look sad at all. They just looked annoyed, and I thought, so this is how it is, in war. Everyone really does die and there’s no use mournin’ it. There’s only how your death is gonna inconvenience others.” 

Gintoki tries for light-hearted again. “What’s gotten into you tonight, Tatsuma? Did you import too much sake into your gut?” 

“But you got better.” Tatsuma laughs. “You were dead and you got better, Kintoki. You and Takasugi and Zura act like that’s normal, but it’s really not, you know. I don’t know what school you three went to, but your teacher didn’t include something that’s on everyone else’s curriculum.” 

Gintoki gives up with joviality. He stares at his feet. His socks are a few days away from molding, and the straps on his sandals are held together with caked mud and inertia. “Yeah.”

“I thought it was all soldiers’ talk,” Tatsuma says mournfully. “You see the big names of the revolution surviving, and they start to seem lucky. It seems a good idea to touch their clothes and pray near them in case their luck rubs off. I thought they just forgot we’re real people.” He laughs again. “Zura and ‘Sugi are like that too, aren’t they?” 

Gintoki shrugs. “Maybe. Probably. They weren’t—like, if you stabbed them back a few years ago, they definitely would’ve died, if you did it right. They weren’t born immortal, I don’t think. They haven’t died before, so it’s hard to tell.” He curls his toes into the dirt. The damp seeps through his socks. “You are too, probably. Sorry.”

Silence. 

“How?” Tatsuma asks. 

Gintoki shrugs again. He can feel an embarrassed flush creeping up behind his ears, and he’s not sure why. “Even a sardine can become holy with devotion,” he says. “If enough people think you’re a god, there’s not a lot you can do about it.”

Tatsuma doesn’t say anything, so neither does Gintoki. He doesn’t know how much time passes, but the light of the burning ships is faint when Gintoki heaves himself to his feet and says, “C’mon, let’s go back.”

He drags Tatsuma with him as he checks the traps he set hours ago, but he only gets a single small white rabbit. 

Takasugi and Zura have set up in an abandoned shrine. It’s not often that they find a shrine; usually, they’re in a tent like the rest of the men. There have been a few close calls when petitioners light incense and accidently smoke their gods out. Gintoki wonders what happened to the god that lived here before they came. What happened to their worshippers. 

Zura’s kneeling at a low table, staring at a map. It’s almost the exact position Gintoki left him in, except now his fingers are threaded through his long hair and he’s developed a slouch. Takasugi’s sitting across from him, mending a strap on his shoe. 

Gintoki drops the rabbit on the map. “Stop looking at that thing, Zura. It’s useless.” He sits down next to Takasugi. “Let them manage by themselves for once.” 

“It’s not useless,” Zura whispers. “It’s Katsura.” 

Gintoki frowns. It’s clear Takasugi hasn’t been making him drink water. They all know Zura’ll go for days without food if no one reminds him. Whatever Zura’s planning, it's important enough that Takasugi’s prioritizing Zura’s mind over his health. Gintoki will have to have words with him later, preferably on the battlefield, where Zura won’t get that pinched look if they both come back with bruises and broken noses. 

Tatsuma picks up the rabbit and looks at the map. There are a few spots of blood where the rabbit had landed. “Ah,” he says. “That’s gotta be a bad omen.” He tosses the rabbit back to Gintoki. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to use your food for dramatic gestures?”

“Any blood in a shrine is taboo,” Zura says. 

“It’s too late for that kind of thinking, Zura,” says Takasugi. 

He’s become a little more melodramatic these days, Gintoki thinks. 

Gintoki uses the tip of Takasugi’s sword to cut through the rabbit’s skin, then works on pulling off the pelt. “Tatsuma says they’re calling me the Shiroyasha now,” he says, petting the fur. “Maybe I should put this over my helmet to complete the theme.” 

“It’d be much better than the pubic hair you’ve got up there now,” Takasugi says. 

“At least we know it can get up there,” Gintoki says. “Did you want it to stuff down your pants? If your height can’t tell the ladies you’re old enough to—” 

Zura, voice trailing sleep, eyes hooded says, “We’re waiting for a cuckoo bird to sing. What do you do if it doesn’t?” 

They’re all used to Zura’s brand of off-beat insanity, so the only pause is to consider the question. 

Takasugi: “Kill it.” 

Tatsuma: “Coax it.” 

Zura: “Wait for it.” 

Takasugi says, “What use is a songbird without a song? We are busy men, Zura.” 

Tatsuma scratches the back of his neck; Gintoki hopes he doesn’t have lice. “You just wasted it, Takasugi. What use could it be to you dead?” 

“And you wasted your energy,” Zura says. “When you could get the same result by doing nothing. All birds will sing eventually.” 

“What does it matter if it sings or not?” Gintoki asks, working the rabbit’s legs out of the confines of its own skin. “The real trick is getting a cuckoo to shut up in the first place. And if you’re that desperate for it, there are plenty of other birds. It’s easy to get some tail out here.”

“No one wants me to set up a trade route for birds, do they?” Tatsuma asks. “The fishing for birds thing is just a legend, really.” This is ignored. 

“You have no ambition, Gintoki,” Takasugi says. “It’s amazing you have any followers. Zura, what are you saying? You don’t want us to attack?” 

“Meat is hard to get anyway,” Tatsuma continues. “I don’t think it’s worth it. I could try and get some music boxes, if you really want something. I think some of the men have instruments, too.” 

“I’m saying we can’t be brash. We’ve been running at each other like reunited lovers on a sunset beach for weeks. We’re hemorrhaging soldiers with no time to clot the wound.” 

“Ah, Zura,” Tatsuma says with a laugh. “Too many metaphors in that one.” 

“If you want to kill all the cuckoos,” Gintoki says, “you should really start with yourselves.” 

Takasugi’s fists curl under the table. Gintoki eyes him as he begins to snap the rabbit’s legs. 

“We’re in a war, Zura,” Takasugi says. “Is your brain so empty that you’ve failed to realize that? This is not a time to hem and haw over individuals.” 

Zura bites his lip, looks down at his hands. They’re dirty in a way that a younger Zura would have never tolerated, and there’s blood around his nails from where he’s been picking at the skin. “When does self-sacrifice become senseless waste?” 

Gintoki scootches closer to Takasugi, close enough that he can whisper, “What was this about, if not for an individual?” under his breath without anyone else hearing, before he stands up, the dead rabbit dangling from his hand. “Come on, Zura. Help me cook this guy.” He steps over the low table and grabs Zura’s wrist, dragging him upright, despite his protests. 

Later, sitting together in front of the hot coals of a burned down fire, the rabbit suspended in a spit-roast above it, Zura leans his head on Gintoki’s shoulder and says, “I’m no good at this, am I?” 

Gintoki shifts a little. None of them have ever been soft, except maybe Tatsuma, but the war’s made Zura sharp, and his chin digs into Gintoki. 

“You know better than to listen to Takasugi,” Gintoki says. “He thinks of himself as the commander, but even he knows that no one can beat you at strategy.”

“They can beat me,” Zura sighs. “That’s the whole problem.” 

Gintoki bites back his _it’s not like it matters_ and _the only one you’re fighting is yourself_ ’s and stays silent. They’ve said it all before. 

They sit there for a long while, listening to the crackling of the cooling coals. Gintoki stares at the rabbit and focuses on Zura’s breathing, the gentle rise and fall of his chest and the warm air that tickles Gintoki’s neck as he exhales. 

Gintoki shifts again, and tries to wrap his arm around Zura’s shoulders. Zura’s ponytail catches between his back and Gintoki’s arm and tugs Zura’s head down; Zura winces and pulls away from Gintoki. 

“I don’t think any of us are good at it,” Zura says. “I think you have to be born into it.”

Gintoki leans over and grabs a stick. He pokes at the coals and says, “Is that what it looks like?” He tosses the stick into the fire. It’s slow to light up but quick to burn. They watch as it turns into ash. 

“Sorry,” Zura says. He turns to look at Gintoki, and his eyes match the coals, dark and burning. “But it’s true. Out of the four of us, you’re the only one who’s coping. We’re humans, Gintoki. We were never meant to be gods.”

Gintoki tries to smile. “You don’t believe in fate, Zura? If you’re gods now, you were always meant to be.”

“It’s not Zura,” he snaps. Quieter, bitterness lacing his voice, he says, “It’s Katsura-exalted.” He runs a hand through his hair, working out his ponytail. “I don’t think any of us can take it much longer. I don’t think Tatsuma even really knows what’s happening. I can feel their belief, Gintoki. And everyday it gets stronger, more desperate, and everyday there’s less I can do.”

“He’s figured it out,” Gintoki says. “But I don’t think gods are meant to do anything. They’re—we’re—just something to put hope in. People need that.”

“I am not a _totem_ ,” Zura says. “Humans should put a little more consideration into what they believe.”

Gintoki bumps his shoulder against Zura’s. “Hey,” he says. “Turn around. No, away from me.” He twists around to face Zura’s back, and runs his fingers through Zura’s hair, working out the knots. “Don’t call them that. ‘Humans.’ You’re one too.”

“Am I?” Zura asks. “Can any of us really say that anymore?”

“Of course,” Gintoki says. There’s blood in Zura’s hair, and he spits on his hands and tries to peel it away with his fingernails. “It’s all in association, you know. We’re a lot closer to being humans that we are to being anything else.”

“I don’t—be _careful_ , Gintoki—a lot of the time, I don’t feel like that’s true,” Zura says. “Mostly, I feel like a monster.”

“That’s an awfully humane feeling for a monster,” Gintoki says. 

Zura laughs. “Have we had this conversation before?”

“Maybe,” Gintoki says. “Don’t remember.” He separates Zura’s hair into three parts and begins to plait it. He doesn’t know how Zura stands it. Sometimes even looking at Zura’s hair makes him antsy. He barely understood it when they were younger, and Zura was always only a few hours away from a bath, and the only thing to worry about was strands falling out of his ponytail and into his eyes during kendo, or sweat on the back of his neck during summer. Now, no matter how much Zura tries, his hair is always tangled and greasy, and there’s no time to worry about a hair tie falling out on a battlefield. Gintoki likes it most of the time though. It’s like a barometer for desperate situations; the nicer Zura has time to make his hair, the less Gintoki has to worry. 

“Your rabbit’s burning,” Zura says as Gintoki ties the braid off with twine. 

“Fuck!” Gintoki drops Zura’s hair and snatches the rabbit from the fire. The outer layer is charred, but when Gintoki scraps off the blackened bits, the meat is tender. 

“Well,” Zura says, standing up, “Let’s head back.”

Gintoki pulls him back down. “No way. I’m sure you haven’t eaten all day. We’re not going back to where anyone can distract you until after I’ve seen that you’ve had something.”

“Gintoki—”

“Just sit down and shut up.” Gintoki presses a bag of water into Zura’s hand. Zura takes a swig, making a face at the taste. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand as he passes the bag back to Gintoki, and the water around his mouth and the dirt on his hand combine to leave a smear of mud across his skin. 

“I know you and Takasugi still think you need to baby me,” Zura says. “But I can take care of myself. Really, I think Takasugi’s taking the war much harder than me.” 

“Fuck Takasugi,” Gintoki says, with feeling. He pulls a haunch off the rabbit and passes it to Zura. “He can stand to take things a little harder. Maybe then he won’t be such a bitch about everything.”

Zura laughs. “He has been tetchy lately.” He picks at the rabbit, pulling meat off with his fingers. 

“He’s always been a bitch.” Gintoki tears into the other haunch, ripping meat from the bone with his teeth. “But now he’s taking it out on you and Tatsuma.”

Zura looks uncomfortable at that. Gintoki wonders what he and Takasugi get up to when he’s not around. What Takasugi does. What he says. “I think he’s trying,” he says. 

“His aim is off,” Gintoki says. 

“A rock sat on for three years will become warm,” Zura says. “We must persevere.” 

“Or we could find a new place to sit,” Gintoki mutters. “Or we could all fart on it, then it’d warm up quick.” He finishes off the last of his part of the rabbit and snaps the bones in half to suck out the marrow. “There’s no point in waiting for anything for that long. If it hasn’t warmed up in a couple of months, you gotta accept that it’s an iceberg.”

“We could’ve made soup with those,” Zura says despondently, as Gintoki tosses the bones onto the coals. He sighs. “This is harder than it needs to be. If only you two could talk to each other.” 

“We talk.”

“You argue,” he says. “How can I explain it? Takasugi…he doesn’t think you have enough reason to be here. And he’s mad, because he relies on you so much but he’s waiting for the day you decide it’s not worth it.”

“ _What_ —”

“Like a group project that’s worth half your grade, but your partner’s already taken the class and doesn’t think it’s worth worrying about.” Zura presses at a blackened bit of rabbit with his thumbnail and looks at the ashes that swirl into the shape of his fingerprint. “It’s different, for you, this is. You’ve done it all before, for one. And.”

“And what?” 

“You have to understand, Gintoki,” Zura says. “Takasugi chose Sensei. He had something else and he gave it up. You always had Sensei. He chose you. And Takasugi thinks there is too big a difference between choosing and being chosen. And it shows in how tightly you grasp at something.”

“Hell,” Gintoki says, and closes his eyes. He’s shaking with frustration; his jaw aches. “You’re saying he thinks—what, that when things get too tough I’m going to bail?” 

“Nooo.” Zura draws out the vowel. “Not exactly. Just that you don’t care enough.” 

“And what do you think?” Gintoki says. “You’re not cottonheaded enough to believe that, are you?” 

Zura’s beat of hesitant silence is enough answer. 

“Talk about it a lot, do you?” Gintoki snaps, standing up. “About how I’m too good for this war? About how much _more_ he meant to _you_ —”

“Means!” Zura says. “You always—he’s not dead!” He looks close to tears. “If you’ve already given up, then why are you here?” He shouts the last words, eyes on the ground, his hands balled up in fists on his lap. 

The words echo in the silence. Zura’s jaw clicks shut. He looks horrified. 

“Gintoki,” he says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…I didn’t mean to—” 

“Yeah, alright,” Gintoki says. “Okay.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and tries to ignore how tired he suddenly feels. “You know what? It’s fine.” Another breath. “I _don’t_ know if Shouyou’s alive. I don’t know how you’re so confident he is. I don’t know if he would want us to be doing this, and I don’t know if this’ll end and have meant anything at all. I don’t know what you two think we’re doing here. And if you don’t think I loved him—love him, then I don’t know why you think I’m still here, or ever came at all.”

“Gintoki—”

“But I am here,” Gintoki says. “You have to at least trust me that much.” He takes Zura’s unresisting hand and pulls him to his feet. “Let’s go.”

When they get back, Tatsuma plays with Zura’s braid and asks, “What’s the occasion?”

“Food,” Gintoki says, and tosses the rest of the rabbit on the table. “Meathead, meet meat.” 

He does end up confronting Takasugi on the battlefield, a few days later, after Takasugi’s worn down Zura enough to make him agree to resume fighting. Gintoki tends towards the front lines, while Takasugi doesn’t come until they’ve already made a good impact with the initial charge, so they have had a lot of moments like this, on the quiet of a dead battlefield as the wounded pick themselves up and the dead start to rot, both of them exhausted but from different fights. More so in the beginning, when they still had a chance. Less now, when they don’t.

“Zura’s worried about you. And you’re not worried enough about Zura,” Gintoki tells Takasugi, who has his foot braced against the saddle of a dead horse and is trying to pull his sword from the chest of its rider. 

“There’s nothing to worry about. For either of us.” Takasugi stumbles back as his sword comes loose. Gintoki catches his shoulders and steadies him; Takasugi shakes himself out of his grip. “You have just as bad of a tendency to mother as Zura does. Leave it be.” 

“I don’t like being a single parent,” Gintoki says. “If you don’t step up, honey, I’m going to consider divorce. No more ‘Would you prefer dinner, a bath, or perhaps, me?’ It’ll just be you slaving away for overtime hours because you’ve got nothing to come home to.”

“You’re _so_ dead.”

Gintoki laughs behind his hand, but steps out of the reach of Takasugi’s sword, just in case. “Everyone knows Zura’s got a thing for widows,” he says. “Are you trying to get on his good side?” 

“I despise you,” Takasugi says. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Gintoki says. “Get more creative with your one-liners, okay? ‘Die, Gintoki,’ ‘I hate you, Gintoki,’ ‘Fuck off, Gintoki.’ It’s so boring. You were much more interesting as a kid.” 

“We’re not children anymore.” 

“Ah, your voice went all gravelly for a second there. Did you feel really cool saying that? I bet you did. It’s classic eighth grader syndrome. It won’t be long before you’re all—” Gintoki presses the palm of one hand into his eye socket and lets his voice drop an octave. “—‘the black beast of vengeance lies within me!’”

Takasugi turns away. “I’m going back.”

“I'm fine with being a beast,” Gintoki says, trotting behind Takasugi, one hand still at his eye. He clutches at his shirt with the other, fingers curling just above his heart. “I neither want nor need anything to protect. I just want to destroy everything, until the beast stops whining.” He jerks his arm from his chest and holds it away from him. “No! The power…This power…It’s burning beneath my skin. I don’t know…how much longer…I can control it!”

“You’re worried about Zura,” Takasugi says without breaking stride. The survivors, who had scattered around the battlefield in small groups, resting until further orders, are beginning to pick themselves up now, seeing Gintoki and Takasugi walking away. “It’ll be harder for him, at least for a little while, when I tell him you were tragically cut down in battle, but I think it’ll be the best in the long run. He’ll no longer have you to distract him, for one.” 

“Oi, that sounded a little too serious,” Gintoki says, catching up with Takasugi’s short gait easily. 

Takasugi stops, turns towards Gintoki. His eyes are blazing, and Gintoki finds himself taking a step back and bringing his hands up in a conciliatory gesture before he realizes what he’s doing. “This is serious, Gintoki,” he spits out. “Who cares if Zura gets a little dehydrated? This is war. Don’t you realize that? I expect it from Tatsuma, whose head is so in the clouds I think he’s been blinded by the sun. Even from Katsura, because he’s never once known how to accept reality. But you, of all people, should know better than to pretend this is anything more or less than it is.”

Takasugi reaches forward and grabs Gintoki’s bare arm, digging his nails into Gintoki’s skin. “Some people can die, Shiroyasha.” He tightens his grip, a bruising force and five points of sharp pain. He pulls Gintoki down, closer, and says into his ear, “And we can only bleed.” 

Then he lets go and walks away, calling his men together. Gintoki’s gaze falls to his arm, where five red crescents are forming little pearls of blood. As he watches, one pearl dissolves into a tiny rivulet that flows around the curve of his wrist to the underside of his arm, where it drips onto the already saturated dirt. 

“Crazy motherfucker,” Gintoki says. It doesn’t make him feel any better. 

Everyone’s shocked when it’s Tatsuma who’s injured next. He’s a good swordsman when he gets around to it, but he spends far more time haggling with black market merchants and making budgets sheets than he does on the battlefield. Everyone thought that if Tatsuma was going to get hurt, he’d come back with his pinky cut off, or soaking wet and wearing concrete boots. Gintoki had expected the major battlefield injury to be Zura, because Zura’s an idiot who can’t take care of himself. Zura thought it would be Takasugi, because Takasugi’s a reckless fool who doesn’t want to take care of himself. Takasugi thought it would be Gintoki, and that it would be (un)friendly fire. Tatsuma, if he had thought about it, probably didn’t think anything would happen to any of them, because Tatsuma’s naive. 

His soldiers bring him back, and it’s—it’s sickening, because Gintoki didn’t know. He would have known immediately if Katsura or Takasugi were injured, because they are so often fighting by his side, and when they’re not, they are two points of light in an otherwise dark landscape, and Gintoki is blind if that light so much as flickers. But that’s not Tatsuma. 

Tatsuma has no reason to be wrapped up in all this. When the soldiers sit around dull campfires and argue theology, Tatsuma’s name rarely crosses their lips, even as they eat the food he provides and wrap jackets his fortunes bought around their shoulders. If there’s a mythology around the students of Shouyou, Tatsuma is only included in the textbook versions, not the living folktales where only the good parts and the best characters get time. 

When he gets the news, he breaks into a sprint to where Tatsuma’s soldiers are bringing him in on a makeshift stretcher. As he gets closer, despite the blood pounding in his ears and the harsh sound of his own breath, he can hear Takasugi saying, “It looks like you really do need a lecture.” 

Zura’s on the outskirts of the small crowd that’s formed around Tatsuma and Takasugi. Gintoki jogs up to him. “What happened?” he asks. 

“I’m not sure,” Zura says. “It sounds like it’s his arm.” 

Tatsuma’s voice is audible, though Gintoki can’t see him yet. Gintoki can feel Zura relax at his side. If he can talk, it can’t be that bad. “Spare me, would ya,” he says. “I just managed to survive, are you tryin’ to finish me off?” 

“You’re already dead,” Takasugi says. Sometimes, Gintoki really hates him.

A beat of silence. A sigh. “Thought so,” Tatsuma says. “Gonna be inconvenient if I can’t even use a sword to peel an apple anymore.”

“You were a disgrace to begin with,” Takasugi says. “Who takes pity on his enemy and ends up losing his good hand over it? That's a fitting end for someone as stupid as you.” 

Zura flinches. 

Gintoki pushes his way through the gathered crowd. Once they realize it’s him, they part easily enough. Zura follows in his wake. 

Tatsuma’s right arm is a mess. Gintoki can’t even tell how it would have happened. Whoever had done it hadn’t been trying to kill him; it looks like they just wanted to cut his arm off at the elbow. The cloth of the stretcher under his arm is soaked red. 

Tatsuma smiles up at him. Gintoki squats down so they’re at eye level. 

“He’s not dead,” Gintoki tells Takasugi. “Cutting down enemies isn’t the only part of a war. Sakamoto Tatsuma's war isn’t some petty war you can clean up with a broken stick." 

 

Takasugi rolls his eyes heavenward. “Get him inside,” he says.

 

After Tatsuma’s been seen to, his arm wrapped up to his shoulder in the cleanest linens they had (tendons snapped, the medic had said), the three of them congregate in Tatsuma’s tent. 

He doesn’t look good. His forehead is beaded with sweat, and his breathing comes heavy. His right arm lays angled away from his body, palm up, just like the medic had left it. 

Zura gets down on his knees next to Tatsuma, and carefully moves Tatsuma’s arm into a more comfortable angle, not touching the stitched up gash beneath the bandages. 

“Goddamnit, Sakamoto, what are we supposed to do now?” Takasugi says, without preamble. 

Tatsuma responds, though his eyes are scrunched shut, little lines of stress pulling at his skin. “M’sorry.” 

“That doesn’t cut it.”

“Takasugi!” Zura looks genuinely angry. It’s kinda scary; Gintoki doesn’t know if he’s seen Zura really mad before. Pissed off, annoyed, but not angry.

“What?” Takasugi snarls, actually snarls, his lips curling up around his teeth. “He’s the one who went and got himself hurt. The raid in two days—”

“Will be fine without him,” Zura cuts in. 

Gintoki thinks he sees Tatsuma wince. He wonders if they still have the beer from the last time they were near a real town. Probably not. 

“He was an integral part of—”

“We’ll be fine without him!” Zura says. “We have time. We can figure something else out.” 

“Like what, Zura?” Takasugi asks. They’re both yelling now. 

“I don’t _know_ ,” Zura grinds out. “We haven’t sat down to talk about it yet. You’ve just come in and shouted.” 

“I’ll do it,” Gintoki says, because Takasugi’s face is so red that Gintoki thinks he might actually explode if he lets this continue. “What, he was—he was driving them into your ambush, right? I can do that.” 

Zura looks up at him speculatively. “Well…”

“You’re needed elsewhere,” Takasugi says, voice clipped. 

Gintoki rolls his eyes. “Yeah? I am, am I? Where?”

“Elsewhere,” Takasugi says. 

“If you—what, I don’t know, if you don’t think I can _handle_ it, if you don’t think you can _trust_ me—”

“That’s not what I said.” 

“It’s what you mean though, isn’t it?” Gintoki says. “Just fucking say it.” He steps forward, and he doesn’t really mean to tower over Takasugi, but he does. Takasugi looks like he’s ready to rip out Gintoki’s throat with his teeth, even if he has to jump.

“Hey guys, come on, let’s not get too riled up,” Tatsuma says. He tries to prop himself up with an elbow, but his arms are too weak and he falls back onto the pallet with a frustrated huff. When he shifts, his right arm doesn’t move with him. “We’re all friends here, right? Think of the time we set up camp at that outpost for a week. I mean, I just dropped by on the one day because apparently there weren't enough beds. Remember how much fun that was?” 

Zura buries his face in his hands. 

“And Gintoki,” Tatsuma continues, “Remember that time, at that brothel, after you were telling ghost stories, you went to take a shit and Takasugi scared you by asking if you wanted red paper or blue paper? I wasn’t there because you guys told me it was tickets only, and you guys bought them in advance and they were sold out at the door, but I hear Zura had to come toss a new pair of pants over the stall. That was thoughtful of him, right?” 

“This is pathetic,” Takasugi says. 

“And don’t get me started on those trade negotiations in Nagoya. Sure, not all of you came, but Takasugi did, and he was sending missives the whole time, asking how things were going back here. You guys are besties, I mean it. We’re all friends here. Now let's stop fighting and get back to drinking. Or stop drinking and get back to fighting. We really need some alcohol, here, stat.” He laughs. “Don’t go off drinking without me again, aha!”

Takasugi massages between his eyebrows with a knuckle. “Fine,” he says. “Zura, would Gintoki work?”

“Probably,” Zura says, pushing himself to his feet. He winces, stamps his feet a little to wake his legs up, and his knees are caked with mud. “Tatsuma’s forces will have to be split up between us, I think.” 

“Alright.” Takasugi closes his eyes. When he opens them again, his expression has hardened. “Tatsuma. Do you remember his face?”

“Whose?” 

Takasugi gestures at Tatsuma’s arm. 

“Oh,” Tatsuma says, and laughs. “I guess.” 

After Zura and Takasugi leave, Zura to rearrange troops and brush his hair and Takasugi to grind his teeth and contemplate gruesome revenge, Gintoki lowers himself to the ground, sitting cross-legged by Tatsuma’s head. The ground is still damp from yesterday’s rain, and water seeps into the bottom of his pants, making him feel like he just pissed himself. 

“It’ll heal, you know,” Gintoki tells Tatsuma. “Takasugi’s just upset because he’s too short to look into the future.” 

“I don’t think it will,” Tatsuma says. He puts his left arm across his eyes, his wrist on the bridge of his nose. “And he can. It’ll be over by then. It’ll probably be over tomorrow. If not tomorrow, by the end of the week. We’ve been losing for a while now, Kintoki. Haven’t you noticed?”

“It’s Gintoki,” Gintoki says. “Of course it’ll heal. This is a thousand times better than what happened to me. Don’t be a pussy.” He pats Tatsuma’s right shoulder, a tad too hard, and Tatsuma winces. “All you need to worry about is what you’ll do when you need to take a piss. Do you think you can angle it okay with your left hand? The last thing we need is pissy—” He hesitates, considering, “—pissy…corners of buildings. Trees. Fence posts. Um, shit, I guess you’ll be okay. Speaking of shit, what about number two? I’m certainly not going to wipe your ass for you.” 

“Kintoki—”

“Gintoki.”

Tatsuma smiles. “It’s not really the time for that old joke, is it?” 

“You’re the one joking,” Gintoki says. “I’m just trying to get you to figure out my name after three years.”

Tatsuma reaches out with his left hand and grabs Gintoki’s wrist. “I’m tryin’a be serious here,” he says. “‘Cause I get the feeling I’m not going to be seeing you again anytime soon.”

“Hey, don’t go raising death flags,” Gintoki says. He pushes Tatsuma’s hand away. “Are you going to show me a picture of your little sisters now? Should I fish it outta your pocket so you can stare at it wistfully? Let’s not fall into clichés this late in the game.” 

“You’re the one headin’ off to battle,” Tatsuma points out. “Kintoki, you can’t keep deluding yourself. You have to know this is the end. At least one of you has to understand that.” 

Gintoki rests his chin on his hand. “Blah, blah, blah. Is this the lecture Gintoki chapter of my life? Can we roll the scroll down to where I say I got it already?”

“I know you three think my head's full of air,” Tatsuma says. “But I can feel the winds of fortune, and they’re not favoring us. They haven’t for a long, long time. Zura’s trying not to go outside, though his tent’s just about to blow away, and Takasugi is walkin’ against it and pretending it's just a sudden gail, and you—I don’t know what you’re doing. You’re actin’ like you live underwater and air ain’t the slightest bit relevant.” 

“Tatsuma,” Gintoki says. “Why don’t you think your hand will heal?”

“I’ve been thinking ‘bout what you said. About belief. And I don’t think I really fit,” Tatsuma says. “Someone prayed for you to come help them, right? You’ve got roots. It’s that teacher you’re always lookin’ for. You’re here as gods because someone asked you to be. And you said Zura and Takasugi weren’t gods before, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be prayed to. But I came here because my family wanted me to, and because I thought I believed in the cause. You guys don’t even know what everyone else is fighting for, do you? Their prayers are incidental. But anything I am is because of you three—your dirty, runoff divinity. And when the war ends, there won’t be that either.”

“I don’t think anyone prayed for us to come here,” Gintoki says. “Maybe prayed for us to stay away. I know what’s happening, Tatsuma. Some of us can read the atmosphere.” 

“If you live, what will you do after this?” Tatsuma asks. It’s another death flag, but what worse luck can they bring down on themselves? 

Gintoki shrugs. “I haven’t thought about it. I’m sure Zura’s got some grand plan I can follow. I guess…I guess I always kinda figured things would go back to how they were. We find our teacher, we get scolded for doing something dangerous, and we go back to school.” Maybe he thought it would be like his first war, where Shouyou took his hand and led him away. But he’s not sure he can go back. He can’t imagine being scolded for tugging Zura’s ponytail or stealing Takasugi’s shoes, or sitting down to history lessons, or even practicing kendo. 

Maybe he’s not even sure he can forgive Sensei for putting him through this again. Maybe Zura and Takasugi are right. But—no. More than anything else in the world he wants to hear Zura laugh again, to see Takasugi relax, to feel Shouyou’s arms wrap around him. 

“What are you going to do?” Gintoki asks.

Tatsuma answers without hesitation. “I’m going to buy a ship. A real one, not like the junkers here. And I’m going to sail to the edges of the world and back.” He smiles. “You only need one hand to turn a steering wheel.”

“Your hand will be fine,” Gintoki snaps. “You know you get seasick, don’t you? And aren’t you allergic to fish?” 

“Aha, I just said that because that fish looked nasty and I wanted your potatoes.” Tatsuma tries to wave down Gintoki’s indignation, uses the wrong hand, and goes pale. 

Gintoki looks up at the peak of the cloth roof while Tatsuma grits his teeth and tries to pretend he’s not in pain.

“Take it easy,” Gintoki says. 

“Thanks,” Tatsuma pants, “for the…advice.” 

“I don’t think,” Gintoki says, and frowns when he doesn’t hear the requisite I know, “that we need our ships for whatever they’re planning.”

“Not all of them,” Tatsuma agrees, his voice strained. “A whole fleet would be pretty fuckin’ conspicuous.” 

“But I do think we need food, and stuff. Alcohol to celebrate our victory, and medicine, just in case,” Gintoki says. “The battle starts in two days? And it’ll last, what, maybe three, on and off, if I can lead them into Zura’s troops? Maybe, once you’re better, you could go get some supplies for our homecoming.” He looks away from the ceiling and back to Tatsuma’s face. 

Tatsuma’s eyes are closed. “You could come with me.” 

Gintoki’s mouth twists at the corner. “The whole world’s too big for me,” he says. “I think I just want to explore to the edges of a schoolyard.” He pushes himself to his feet. His pants stick uncomfortably to the back of his thighs. 

“Actually, I do haf’ta piss,” Tatsuma says. “Kintoki, do you think you can direct it a bit to the left? Mine’s a little curved, so you’ll really have to take a firm grip.” 

Gintoki flips him off. “Go fuck yourself.” 

“Ahaha, that’s another thing I can’t do. You really want to rub it in, don’t you? I’d much rather you help me rub one out, okay, but that can wait until after I piss.” 

“Figure it out yourself.” 

Tatsuma laughs. “Come back whenever you’re ready to lend a hand.” 

Takasugi’s waiting for him outside the tent, his arms crossed and looking for all the world like he’s leaning on something and brooding, though he can’t possibly lean on a tent. “Took you long enough,” he says. 

“Eavesdropping?”

Takasugi seems legitimately offended. “I can’t imagine either of you would say anything worth listening to. It looks like you shit yourself. Clean off your ass.” 

“Don’t look at my ass.” Gintoki puts his pinky in his left nostril and twists it. “Found the bastard yet?” He flicks his find in Takasugi’s direction. 

“We’re heading out now,” Takasugi says, and stalks off. 

They do find him. He gets away, though Gintoki likes to think that they gave twice as good as Tatsuma got. But that battle bleeds into the next, and the ambush fails, and then their armies are trapped and alone (and there was never any time to go back to Tatsuma, Gintoki hopes to hell that he up and left), and then their armies are gone, and then someone asks, “Will they choose the path of dying with you?” and Gintoki says _no_. 

Resolution is a myth, anyway.


End file.
